The Chaplet of Pearls

CHAPTER XVII. THE GHOSTS OF THE TEMPLARS

‘Ill news, Martin, I see by your look!’ cried Eustacie, starting to her feet from the heap of straw on which she was sitting in his cowhouse, one early April day, about seven weeks since her evasion from the convent.

‘Not so, I hope, Madame, but I do not feel at ease. Monsieur has not sent for me, nor told me his plans for the morrow, and I much doubt me whether that bode not a search here. Now I see a plan, provided Madame would trust herself to a Huguenot.’

‘They would guard me for my husband’s sake.’

‘And could Madame walk half a league, as far as the Grange du Temple? There live Matthieu Rotrou and his wife, who have, they say, baffled a hundred times the gendarmes who sought their ministers. No one ever found a pastor, they say, when Rotrou had been of the congregation; and if they can do so much for an old preacher with a long tongue, surely they can for a sweet young lady; and if they could shelter her just for tomorrow, till the suspicion is over, then would I come for Madame with my cart, and carry her into Chollet among the trusses of hay, as we had fixed.’

Eustacie was already tying her cloak, and asking for Lucette; but she was grieved to hear that Martin had sent her to vespers to disarm suspicion, and moreover that he meant not to tell her of his new device. ‘The creature is honest enough,’ he said, ‘but the way to be safe with women is not to let them know.’

He cut short all messages and expressions of gratitude, and leading Eustacie to a small stream, he made her creep along its course, with her feet in the water so as to be sheltered by the boughs that hung over the banks, while he used his ling strides to enable him to double back and enter into conversation with passers-by, quite of the track of the Grange du Temple, but always telling her where he should join her again, and leaving with her the great dog, whom she had come to regard as a friend and protector. Leaving the brook, he conducted her beneath hedges and by lonely woodland paths beyond the confines of her own property, to a secluded valley, so shut in by wooded hills that she had not been aware of its existence. Through an extensive orchard, she at length, when nearly spent with the walk, beheld the cluster of stone buildings, substantial as the erections of religious orders were wont to be.

Martin found a seat for her, where she might wait while he went on alone to the house, and presently returned with both the good people of the farm. They were more offhand and less deferential than were her own people, but were full of kindliness. They were middle-aged folk, most neatly clad, and with a grave, thoughtful look about them, as if life were a much heavier charge to them than to their light-hearted neighbours.

‘A fair day to you, Madame,’ said the farmer, doffing his wide-flapped hat. ‘I am glad to serve a sufferer for the truth’s sake.’

‘My husband was,’ faltered Eustacie.

‘AH! la pauvre,’ cried the good woman, pressing forward as she saw how faint, heated, and exhausted was the wanderer. ‘Come in, ma pauvrette. Only a bride at the Bartholomew! Alas! There, lean on me, my dear.’

To be tutoyee by the Fermiere Rotrou was a shock; yet the kind manner was comfortable, and Eustacie suffered herself to be led into the farm-house, where, as the dame observed, she need not fear chance-comers, for they lived much to themselves, and no one would be about till their boy Robinet came in with the cows. She might rest and eat there in security, and after that they would find a hiding-place for her—safe as the horns of the altar—for a night or two; only for two nights at most.

‘Nor do I ask more,’ said Eustacie. ‘Then Martin will come for me.’

‘Ah, I or Blaise, or whichever of us can do it with least suspicion.’

‘She shall meet you here,’ added Rotrou.

‘All right, good man; I understand; it is best I should not know where you hide her. Those rogues have tricks that make it as well to know nothing. Farewell, Madame, I commend you to all the saints till I come for you on Monday morning.’

Eustacie gave him her hand to kiss, and tried to thank him, but somehow her heart sank, and she felt more lonely than ever, when entirely cast loose among these absolute strangers, than amongst her own vassals. Even the farm-kitchen, large, stone-built, and scrupulously clean, seemed strange and dreary after the little, smoky, earth-built living-rooms in which her peasantry were content to live, and she never had seemed to herself so completely desolate; but all the time she was so wearied out with her long and painful walk, that she had no sooner taken some food than she began to doze in her chair.

‘Father,’ said the good wife, ‘we had better take la pauvrette to her rest at once.’

‘Ah! must I go any farther?’ sighed Eustacie.

‘It is but a few fields beyond the yard, ma petite,’ said the good woman consolingly; ‘and it will be safer to take you there ere we need a light.’

The sun had just set on a beautiful evening of a spring that happily for Eustacie had been unusually warm and mild, when they set forth, the dame having loaded her husband with a roll of bedding, and herself taking a pitcher of mild and a loaf of bread, whilst Eustacie, as usual, carried her own small parcel of clothes and jewels. The way was certainly not long to any one less exhausted than she; it was along a couple of fields, and then through a piece of thicket, where Rotrou held back the boughs and his wife almost dragged her on with kind encouraging words, till they came up to a stone ivy-covered wall, and coasting along it to a tower, evidently a staircase turret. Here Rotrou, holding aside an enormous bush of ivy, showed the foot of a winding staircase, and his wife assured her that she would not have far to climb.

She knew where she was now. She had heard of the old Refectory of the Knights Templars. Partly demolished by the hatred of the people upon the abolition of the Order, it had ever since lain waste, and had become the centre of all the ghostly traditions of the country; the locality of all the most horrid tales of REVENANTS told under the breath at Dame Perrine’s hearth or at recreation hour at Bellaise. Her courage was not proof against spiritual terrors. She panted and leant against the wall, as she faintly exclaimed, ‘The Temple—there—and alone!’

‘Nay, Lady, methought as Monsieur votre mari knew the true light, you would fear no vain terror nor power of darkness.’

Should these peasants—these villeins—be bold, and see the descendant of the ‘bravest of knights,’ the daughter of the house of Ribaumont, afraid? She rallied herself, and replied manfully, ‘I FEAR not, no!’ but then, womanfully, ‘But it is the Temple! It is haunted! Tell me what I must expect.’

‘I tell you truly, Madame,’ said Rotrou; ‘none whom I have sheltered here have seen aught. On the faith of a Christian, no evil spirit—no ghost—has ever alarmed them; but they were fortified by prayer and psalm.’

‘I do pray! I have a psalm-book,’ said Eustacie, and she added to herself, ‘No, they shall never see that I fear. After all, REVENANTS can do nothing worse than scare one; they cannot touch one; the saints and angels will not let them—and my uncle would do much worse.’

But to climb those winding stairs, and resign herself to be left alone with the Templars for the night, was by far the severest trial that had yet befallen the poor young fugitive. As her tire feet dragged up the crumbling steps, her memory reverted to the many tales of the sounds heard by night within those walls—church chants turning into diabolical songs, and bewildered travelers into thickets and morasses, where they had been found in the morning, shuddering as they told of a huge white monk, with clanking weapons, and a burning cross of fire printed on his shoulder and breast, who stood on the walls and hurled a shrieking babe into the abyss. Were such spectacles awaiting her? Must she bear them? And could her endurance hold out? Our Lady be her aid, and spare her in her need!

At the top of the stairs she found Rotrou’s hand, ready to help her out on a stone floor, quite dark, but thickly covered, as she felt and smelt, with trusses of hay, between which a glimmering light showed a narrow passage. A few steps, guided by Rotrou’s hand, brought her out into light again, and she found herself in a large chamber, with the stone floor broken away in some places, and with a circular window, thickly veiled with ivy, but still admitting a good deal of evening light.

It was in fact a chamber over the vaulted refectory of the knights. The walls and vaults still standing in their massive solidity, must have tempted some peasant, or mayhap some adventurer, rudely to cover in the roof (which had of course been stripped of its leading), and thus in the unsuspected space to secure a hiding-place, often for less innocent commodities than the salt, which the iniquitous and oppressive gabelle had always led the French peasant to smuggle, ever since the days of the first Valois. The room had a certain appearance of comfort; there was a partition across it, a hearth with some remains of wood-ashes, a shelf, holding a plate, cup, lamp, and a few other necessaries; and altogether the aspect of the place was so unlike what Eustacie had expected, that she almost forgot the Templar as she saw the dame begin to arrange a comfortable-looking couch for her wearied limbs. Yet she felt very unwilling to let them depart, and even ventured on faltering out the inquiry whether the good woman could not stay with her,—she would reward her largely.

‘It is for the love of Heaven, Madame, not for gain,’ said Nanon Rotrou, rather stiffly. ‘If you were ill, or needed me, all must then give way; but for me to be absent this evening would soon be reported around the village down there, for there are many who would find occasion against us.’ But, by way of consolation, they gave her a whistle, and showed her that the window of their cottage was much nearer to a loophole-slit looking towards the east than she had fancied. The whistle perpetrated a mist unearthly screech, a good deal like that of an owl, but more discordant, and Nanon assured her that the sound would assuredly break her slumbers, and bring her in a few minutes at any moment of need. In fact, the noise was so like the best authenticated accounts of the shrieks indulged in by the spirits of the Temple, that Eustacie had wit enough to suspect that it might be the foundation of some of the stories; and with that solace to her alarms, she endured the departure of her hosts, Nanon promising a visit in the early morning.

The poor child was too weary to indulge in many terrors, the beneficent torpor of excessive fatigue was upon her, happily bringing slumberous oblivion instead of feverish restlessness. She strove to repeat her accustomed orisons; but sleep was too strong for her, and she was soon lying dreamlessly upon the clean homely couch prepared for her.

When she awoke, it was with a start. The moon was shining in through the circular window, making strange white shapes on the floor, all quivering with the shadows of the ivy sprays. It looked strange and eerie enough at the moment, but she understood it the next, and would have been reassured if she had not become aware that there was a low sound, a tramp, tramp, below her. ‘Gracious saints! The Templar! Have mercy on me! Oh! I was too sleepy to pray! Guard me from being driven wild by fright!’ She sat upright, with wide-spread eyes, and, finding that she herself was in the moonlight, through some opening in the roof, she took refuge in the darkest corner, though aware as she crouched there, that if this were indeed the Templar, concealment would be vain, and remembering suddenly that she was out of reach of the loophole-window.

And therewith there was a tired sound in the tread, as if the Templar found his weird a very length one; then a long heavy breath, with something so essentially human in its sound that the fluttering heart beat more steadily. If reason told her that the living were more perilous to her than the dead, yet feeling infinitely preferred them! It might be Nanon Rotrou after all; then how foolish to be crouching there in a fright! It was rustling through the hay. No-no Nanon; it is a male figure, it has a long cloak on. Ah! it is in the moonlight-silver hair—silver beard. The Templar! Fascinated with dismay, yet calling to mind that no ghost has power unless addressed, she sat still, crossing herself in silence, but unable to call to mind any prayer or invocation save a continuous ‘Ave Mary,’ and trying to restrain her gasping breath, lest, if he were not the Templar after all, he might discover her presence.

He moved about, took off his cloak, laid it down near the hay, then his cap, not a helmet after all, and there was no fiery cross.

He was in the gloom again, and she heard him moving much as though he were pulling down the hay to form a bed. Did ghosts ever do anything so sensible? If he were an embodied spirit, would it be possible to creep past him and escape while he lay asleep? She was almost becoming familiarized with the presence, and the supernatural terror was passing off into a consideration of resources, when, behold, he was beginning to sing. To sing was the very way the ghosts began ere they came to their devilish outcries. ‘Our Lady keep it from bringing frenzy. But hark! hark!’ It was not one of the chants, it was a tune and words heard in older times of her life; it was the evening hymn, that the little husband and wife had been wont to sing to the Baron in the Chateau de Leurre—Marot’s version of the 4th Psalm.

If it had indeed been the ghostly chant, perhaps Eustacie would not have been able to help joining it. As it was, the familiar home words irresistibly impelled her to mingle her voice, scarce knowing what she did, in the verse—

The hymn died away in its low cadence, and then, ere Eustacie had had time to think of the consequences of thus raising her voice, the new-comer demanded:

‘Is there then another wanderer here?’

‘Ah! sir, pardon me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I will not long importune you, but only till morning light—only till the Fermiere Rotrou comes.’

‘If Matthieu and Anne Rotrou placed you here, then all is well,’ replied the stranger. ‘Fear not, daughter, but tell me. Are you one of my scattered flock, or one whose parents are known to me?’ Then, as she hesitated, ‘I am Isaac Gardon—escaped, alas! alone, from the slaughter of the Barthelemy.’

‘Master Gardon!’ cried Eustacie. ‘Oh, I know! O sir, my husband loved and honoured you.’

‘Your husband?’

‘Yes, sir, le Baron de Ribaumont.’

‘That fair and godly youth! My dear old patron’s son! You—you! But—’ with a shade of doubt, almost of dismay, ‘the boy was wedded—wedded to the heiress–’

‘Yes, yes, I am that unhappy one! We were to have fled together on that dreadful night. He came to meet me to the Louvre—to his doom!’ she gasped out, nearer to tears than she had ever been since that time, such a novelty was it to her to hear Berenger spoken of in kind or tender terms; and in her warmth of feeling, she came out of her corner, and held our her hand to him.